Posted
by
Soulskillon Wednesday December 11, 2013 @05:47PM
from the can-we-convince-the-NSA-to-spy-on-a-ringworld dept.

doom writes "Charles Stross has announced that there won't be a third book in the Halting State trilogy because
reality (in a manner of speaking) has caught up to him too fast The last straw was apparently the news that the NSA planted spies in networked games like WoW. Stross comments: 'At this point, I'm clutching my head. Halting State wasn't intended to be predictive when I started writing it in
2006. Trouble is, about the only parts that haven't happened yet are Scottish Independence and the use of actual quantum computers for cracking public key encryption (and there's a big fat question mark over the latter-- what else are the NSA up to?).'"

Yeah, but Catalonia has its referendum before Scotland does. After Catalonia is independent, Madrid will have a lot less to say on Scottish EU membership. Also, and more importantly, maybe finally UEFA will rethink it's stupid 'one country one league' rule.

Given the northward flow of tax money in the UK currently, Scottish Independence would mean that the government of the rest of the UK could immediately end all of the austerity cuts. Meanwhile, the Scottish government would be trying to get comparable handouts from the EU (likely vetoed by Spain so that Catalan independence doesn't get any inspiration), or watching the economy tank. All of the benefits that Scotland gains from large proportions of the military being stationed there in peacetime would evap

Still, us English folk can only hope that a future which consists of the Scots living quietly amongst themselves and us not having to put up with that awful dirge Auld Lang Syne every bloody New Year's Eve isn't the stuff of science fiction...

And why should they stay amongst themselves? It's an old Scottish tradition to live in England. Even in the (extremely unlikely) case where Scotland does not join the EU, it could still bee in the EEA through EFTA and still keep the free movement of people.

It's probably just writer's block. Intelligence agency interest in on-line games was in the news back around 2006-2008, just like the warrantless wiretapping controversy. If he was going to abandon it for the stated reason I would expect he would have done it then. Besides, this sort of thing hasn't really stopped other writers from creating interesting stories.

So far in his prolific career, Stross has never been short of ideas. Writer's Block is highly unlikely. As he posts in the blog, likely he will write a book with the recent NSA revelations as the baseline, and extrapolate from there.

Well, writers block happens to anyone who writes. It's a natural state of the process, IMHO. I bet a prolific writer like Stross probably experiences and overcomes more writers block than I will ever see. What might have happened here is that Stross came up with a better and from his point of view more engaging story and simply lost the desire to continue the existing trilogy.

I suppose he could have applied nose to grindstone and crank out a final novel in the series, but that wouldn't be much fun. Maybe

Stross has more than once (now) decided that he didn't like the was a series was going, and ended it. It's not exactly writer's block, because he wrote something else instead, but it still ended the series.

In the "Singularity Sky" series he decided that he couldn't avoid the bad guy's winning in the third volume, so he just decided to stop with "Iron Sunrise". In the "Halting State" series, Scotland was an independent country. Most of his outrageous ideas kept happening (so far "Athena" hasn't yet shown

The technology that we have (and the more advanced versions of technology that the BIG BROTHERS get to play with) today already enables 24/7/365 tracking - and the way we laid out our "rules and regulation" we have already submitted EVERYTHING THAT IS RELATED TO US (our name, our address, our car registration number, our HAM radio identification, our spouse' identity, the identity of our children, our education, the subjects that we took in the schools, and

How about this: The old governments do not change, instead the corporations incite violence by proxy. Countries conquering countries is over, they're "freed" instead. The country borders and names left the same, but the corporations fight on economic fronts to institute their economic systems and siphon up as much wealth and work from the lower and middle classes as possible in a shadow war between the people of the world and Marxist Corpratism.

Umm...the !Doctorow options (1,2,4) are not mutually exclusive; in fact, I'm convinced we have been in a Corporatocracy for a while, which controls us through the "utopia where the people are bribed into apathy/foolishness" (courtesy of MPAA/RIAA mafia + youtube and friends), and the "Totalitarian states in constant war" is right around the corner--hell, you can see THAT just in the other comments here!

A lot of fiction looks dated when current events or technology surpass what was supposed to be a look at the future. This time it caught up with this novelist before he even finished his story. Some are suggesting it caught up with him before he finished the previous piece of it.

You mean the only thing that made it worth while was the ancilary descriptions of technology?

These descriptions, to nerds, are like titty-shots in movies are to high school boys. Sure, maybe we go through the whole plot once once or twice, but what we really got the book for was to reread the technical, oh so technical, descriptions, and boners, err...uh, bonus for equations that we can work into simulations.

plot development

Also known as filler-between-technical-descriptions. I doubt anyone is ever entertained by that alone.

interpersonal relationships

I tried to Google this; still not sure what you're talking about here, but it sounds boring too.

That reply is actually especially relevant to this discussion. I don't like Stross's writing much; the characters aren't very interesting and his plot twists aren't handled well, but I keep reading his works for the all the mathematically derived apocalypses and computer generated magic.

This is true, but it's unfair to generalize all Science Fiction in this way. It doesn't really matter if what you write about is plausible or even possible. It doesn't even matter if it's already happened. A good story doesn't need to be completely fictional to work, because the strength is in the story you tell, not the technology in the world you've created.

As a writer of science fiction myself, having originally set most of the developments in my story to occur and mature over the next century, I was sur

It's predictive if all you read is near-future sci-fi. Most of the sci-fi we call predictive is either mere coincidence or some bored engineer reading or watching it and deciding it's a cool thing to make things like sentient AI (Asimov, Clarke, et al), a multipurpose hand-held information acquisition tool (Star Trek), or a laser-based space defense system (Star Wars). So no suprise there. If you fire in one general direction enough times, you're bound to hit the bull's eye some time.

Indeed, that is true. Though I was referring more to the fact that while he was writing those books, the surveillance was already widely known to be happening in his present, not the future, and had been for some time.

It would be a bit like writing a science fiction novel today that involved a global social network or semi-robotic car assembly lines.

It wasn't public knowledge. Everyone who believed it was considered paranoid, at least during the 1960's-70's. Maybe they were. (If you think you know when they really started listening to everyone, I think you're over estimating certainty.)

P.S.: Surveillance was not the point of the Stross books. It was background, Just like Scottish independence. In Halting State the big surprise was supposed to be a bank robbery inside a virtual game. Shortly after it was published, it happened in Eve-online. The police (and others) were wearing something considerably like google glass. (Actually, I think they looked more like a pair of heavy sunglasses, but I'd need to reread to be sure.) There were virtual overlays on reality published by advertisers, game players, etc. The wierd thing is those have started happening while almost nobody is wearing a VR headset. Spooks, a VR mixed with reality game, was a major subplot. So my brother-in-law walks in with a game called ghosts played on his phone, where he's supposed to chase around after a ghost that can only be seen on his phone, but where the chasing happens in physical space. (That's not Spooks, by any means. For one thing the ghost tried to get him to chase it in front of a car driving down the street. Spooks had more awareness of the actual surroundings.)

Basicly, the world that developed made a lot of choices that weren't the same, and the stuff that was supposed to be new and exciting kept happening before most people bought the book. Near future SF used to be easier. Unexpected changes were slower in arriving. They ALWAYS arrived out of order, and with some choices not the same, but usually you had several years leeway (so most of your sales could happen before the book was obsolete).

So now he's discontinued the series. And he's going to wait until the votes for Scottish independence and Britain remaining in the EU are in before he tries any more near future books. Quite reasonable. (Snarl! I don't care if the series didn't match this universe, I wanted the next volume.)

All indications are that Verisign and others were compelled to turn over their master keys, so what's left to crack? Seriously, via MitM they can own just about any internet-using box on the planet, and failing that, there's always the cousin of Stuxnet.

The only solution at this point is a human one - make them stop. Technologically, it's already past game over.

Speaking of The Laundry series, he had to change the villains in the Atrocity Archives after they, Al-quada turned out to actually be planning an attack on US soil.

I think he needs to start writing something pleasant and nondistopian, because it is looking more and more like someone is channeling his writing into the real world. Uh oh, I think he predicted that too, in The Jennifer Morgue.

... anything sufficiently distancing itself from reality is too farfetched to make a plausible premise. I mean, he COULD say that they take DNA from citizens and then create virtual humans inside a matrix to predict human interaction to better control the population.

Then we have a virtual Snowden break lose on the web like Max Headroom and someone ends up with another case of writers block.

Perhaps Mr Stross could use his skills to to describe an imaginary world where the government told the whole truth to the electorate, there was a right to privacy, and only politicians were systematically spied on and investigated...

He's still writing a book with many of the same ideas. I'll just be glad if he drops the "second person storytelling" gimmick. That was clever for about one chapter, and most people won't even get the joke.

In a word, NO. Stross wrote three books that are formally Singularity/Post Singularity novels, and I guarentee you he absolutely cannot write a nice utopic singularity (although Accelerando has a happy ending for some lobster dataclones, and some individual people in the Iron Sunrise duology make it through all the horrible things happening and have nice enough individual lives, a Strossian Singularity inevitiably includes mass extinctions.). His current series include one with a possible future singularity

I had an idea for a book (that I'd probably never write) where a Canadian spy service turned out to be one of the worst offenders for international assholery. The basic premise was that nobody would think of Canada as a bunch of meddling douch-nozzles; and then damn it turns out we are.

The whole stupid thing is that if you were to add up all the value that Canada has received from our super spy stuff that it would pale in comparison to the damage that has been done to our international reputation. How man

If it turns out that the spies were stopping a James Bond level supervillain every month or so then it might have been worth it.

That's the problem with all of this massive state defense apparatus bullshit. I know people who are various types of special forces and they will happily tell you that there are real threats out there, but then they will tell you that they can't tell you anything about them. In truth, they actually know fuck-all, and are just going by whatever their higher-ups have told them. They have no idea who the hell they're being sent out to kill, except what they're told.

I sympathize with Charles Stross's problem. When I wrote "TobakkoNacht" in 1997, it was based on a prediction that by the mid 2020s we'd be seeing the introduction of smoking bans outdoors in public plazas (which NY's Bloomberg brought in three years ago and has been emulated in California and elsewhere), smoking bans in brothels to protect the "working girls" (old news now in Canada), people being shot in smoking disputes (numbers of them by now, including two pregnant women, as well as country singer Wayne Mills last week), a worldwide antitobacco treaty (similar to the 2000s' "World Framework On Tobacco Control" that is now threatening countries that refuse to abide by its dictates) and a president having to hide his evil smoking habit. The problem was that aside from a preliminary Kindle short story version in late 2008, I didn't get to fully publish it until a few months ago as an opening fiction-piece in "TobakkoNacht -- The Antismoking Endgame." When I originally wrote the story I was criticized for supposing that any such things could come about as early as the 2020s... or *ever* come about at all.

That's a bit like AsbestosNacht -- the idea that the wonder material of the twentieth century, asbestos, was a toxic hazard to health would have been laughed at by the enlightened rationalists of the 1930s and 1940s. Fortunately everyone knows tobacco is harmless and indeed positively beneficial hence the presence of public smokatoriums burning the weed in city centres so everyone can enjoy its healthgiving effects and pleasant odours. And let's not forget those other boons to mankind, lead and mercury, so

(That may be a paraphrase of a quote in the last year or so from a lady whose name I can't recall. Nor can I find the original text where it appeared. But it has stuck with me just the same. My apologies to the original author.)

It is with great regret that we have learned of the discontinuation of your how-to manual, Halting State.

We have unfortunately not been able to encourage Scotland to secede from the United Kingdom in a timely manner, however, we assure you that our state of Quantum Computing has reached appropriate levels.

We have been eagerly awaiting your third instalment. Considering your decision to discontinue your series, we would appreciate any notes you have to be emailed. Anywhere will be fine.

Since I don't believe in Santa Claus, could you take a break from patrolling Gotham to dismantle the evil NSA and put those responsible for it in Arkham Asylum?I'm convinced the Penguin is behind it, due to the scope, peril and nuisance involved. Lotta tuxedos in the D.C. and burbs area. The proliferation of clowns in the White House/Capitol Hill/Lincoln Memorial areas would suggest that the Joker has been masquerading as President for years now. Could you rid us of these fiends and their henchmen?

The plot you mention doesn't contain any sci-fi, at all. Drones have been about for ages, VR is still crap, and no one car get stuck in it (how would that even happen, anyway?).

Predictive fiction has always been problematic... I don't know one writer who's got the last 50 years close to right. Half thought we'd be living on the moon and mars, the other half thought the Soviets would have invaded or bombed us to dust, and none of them predicted the pervasiveness of computers or the Internet.

They are just the ones that didn't see Nixon coming. Who would have thought that the USA would throw away an expensive space station despite having several years to save it and enough bits of Saturn V already built to do so. I think that was the turning point, throwing away Skylab, giving up on the moon and distracting everyone into the ever changing Shuttle project for long enough that a generation of expertise was lost.

You need to go so far into the future, for which you need to know so much about physics and engineering and etc. to even try and predict what will happen, that you may as well start looking for a job applying that knowledge rather than struggle to be a writer with totally uncertain income.

Maybe that's a sign that the Singularity is indeed going to happen. The whole idea is that the speed of technological achievements continues to increase to the point new advances start coming faster than we can follow them. After the Singularity you're presumed to live like this: you start to become acquainted to the last industrial revolution-like development, with all it entails in terms of new technologies, and you hear it's already 20 generations behind, individual technological achievements within eac

Or maybe the third book could be a satire - introduce a Snowden-type character into the novel and have him assassinated / kidnapped by the government, or start a war between the US and the country providing his asylum that ends in nuclear winter.

Doesn't work; the UK authorities (who are in cahoots with the US on this) in Charles Stross's worlds are reasonable authority figures -- the good guys.

Well, the Scottish police are good guys. I'm not so sure about either the UK figures or the EU figures. They seem to be basically well meaning, and able to justify their actions to themselves, but... outsiders may frequently have a hard time accepting their justifications, and with good reason.

His books are actually set in Scotland, and the spys work for the EU. The NSA being the heavy isn't appropriate for the series. (It's supposed to be "The man from Uncle"...to paraphrase a joke from Halting State.)

OTOH, maybe it's just as well. His series seem to have a tendency to start out light, and then become progressively grimmer. (Well, I haven't followed the Merchant Princes, and I gave up on the Laundry when it got too grim in the 3rd volume. So maybe it then gets lighter again.)